4 non-public astronauts should wait a bit longer to get to house.
The four-person Ax-4 mission to the Worldwide House Station (ISS) was presupposed to carry off atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Florida on Wednesday morning (June 11). However that is not the plan.
“Standing down from tomorrow’s Falcon 9 launch of Ax-4 to the @Space_Station to permit extra time for SpaceX groups to restore the LOx leak recognized throughout put up static fireplace booster inspections. As soon as full — and pending Vary availability — we’ll share a brand new launch date,” SpaceX introduced through X on Tuesday night (June 10).
Standing down from tomorrow’s Falcon 9 launch of Ax-4 to the @Space_Station to permit extra time for SpaceX groups to restore the LOx leak recognized throughout put up static fireplace booster inspections. As soon as full – and pending Vary availability – we’ll share a brand new launch date pic.twitter.com/FwRc8k2Bc0June 11, 2025
LOx is liquid oxygen, one of many two propellants utilized by the Falcon 9’s Merlin engines. The opposite is RP-1, a rocket-grade kerosene.
As SpaceX’s put up talked about, the corporate seen the LOx leak after static-firing the rocket’s first stage, an exercise that befell on Sunday (June 8). Static fires are frequent prelaunch assessments during which a rocket’s engines are briefly ignited whereas the booster is anchored to the pad.
Invoice Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s vp of construct and flight reliability, mentioned the leak throughout a press convention on Monday (June 9) that was held after Ax-4’s launch readiness overview.
This Falcon 9 first stage has one flight underneath its belt, and the leak was additionally seen on that mission, throughout its reentry to Earth’s ambiance, Gerstenmaier mentioned.
SpaceX “found that we had not totally repaired the booster throughout refurbishment, or we did not, really, did not discover the leak and did not get it corrected,” he mentioned.
Gerstenmaier mentioned on Monday that SpaceX was nonetheless troubleshooting the leak, although he expressed confidence that the difficulty would not stop an on-time liftoff.
“We’re putting in a purge that may basically mitigate the leak, if it nonetheless continues, if we see it on launch day,” he mentioned. “So we shall be totally able to go fly.”
Ax-4 would be the fourth astronaut mission to the ISS organized by the Houston firm Axiom House. It is going to be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a record-breaking former NASA astronaut who’s now Axiom’s director of human spaceflight.
The opposite crewmembers are pilot Shubhanshu Shukla of India; mission specialist Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and the European House Company; and Hungarian mission specialist Tibor Kapu. No astronaut from any of those three international locations has ever visited the ISS earlier than.
The Ax-4 astronauts will spend about two weeks residing and dealing aboard the orbiting lab, performing about 60 totally different science experiments. They’re going to then return to Earth with a splashdown within the Pacific Ocean.
